


Breakfast at Baker Street

by that_melancholy_dream



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 19:58:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8340784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_melancholy_dream/pseuds/that_melancholy_dream
Summary: A tranquil moment of battiness, 221B style. No plot to speak of.





	

“Oh. There’s a bat in the sugar bowl. Can I eat it?”

John didn’t raise his eyes from the newspaper. “The bat or the sugar?”

“Well, I was referring to the sugar… but I suppose it would be interesting to find out what bat tastes like.” There was that particular tone in Sherlock’s voice – eager glee at the prospect of scientific discovery, combined with a touch of detached as his brain started to sort out the practical details of conducting the experiment.

“Eew, Sherlock,” John commented eloquently. The newspaper gave a rustle as his body gave an involuntary shudder at the thought.

“Why, what’s your objection? Do bats carry diseases?”

“Why ask me? Don’t you have a belfry in your Mind Palace?”

Sherlock turned and John could feel the impact of the indignant scowl at him. It was somewhat similar to the concussive blast of an explosion. “Hilarious, John.”

“Thank you. I do try.”

“Not very hard…” Sherlock muttered.

“Oi, I’m a Doctor, not a comedian.” John looked up from the paper to see Sherlock standing by the kitchen counter, still holding the sugar bowl and peering into it. For once, there’d been enough space on the kitchen table for John to partake of breakfast at it. He assumed that Sherlock was currently in-between two experiments. Either that or the daft detective was engaged in a project of such magnitude (read: potential for disaster) that he’d judged it wise to remove the microscope and chemistry equipment and other paraphernalia to his bedroom. If the latter was true, John wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to know – either Sherlock was being considerate of John’s feelings on the subject of toxic fumes and corrosive agents in the kitchen… or he was cooking up something so foul that even John’s endless patience wouldn’t tolerate it. With a high probability of a large explosion and/or fire engulfing Sherlock’s bedroom in the near future…

No, on second thought, John did _not_ want to know. He took a quick look up to the ceiling to confirm that the fire detector was where it was supposed to be – it, along with the doorbell, had a tendency to migrate to the freezer whenever their buzzing irritated Sherlock. Right, the detector was present and accounted for. John put aside all thoughts of experiments with stoic determination. “And you did get the joke this time, didn’t you? Bats in the belfry, yeah?”

Sherlock gave his eyes a roll without turning to look at John. “Yes, yes, I got it. I am convulsing with laughter.”

“And speaking of doctors, I’m not a veterinarian, in case you’ve failed to notice. You’re the one with the bizarre factoids about, well, just about everything. If you ask me, you’re more likely to be knowledgeable about bats than I am.” John folded the newspaper and put it aside, grabbing a piece of toast instead.

“I haven’t investigated a bat-related crime so there has been no need to acquire extensive information on the subject. Well, I say bat…” Sherlock drawled and tilted his head to squint at the cupboard door. “There _was_ the case with a baseball bat involved.”

“Who plays baseball in London?” John asked, sounding offended and looking outraged. He’d befriended quite a few Americans while serving Queen and Country – nothing wrong with that – but there were limits to his broad-mindedness. This was England, for God’s sake, he thought as he squared his shoulders and took a steady sip of his tea. Cricket bats were acceptable. A polo stick, a tennis racquet, a golf club, a rowing oar… a hurley – all acceptable, proper British murder weapons. But not a bloody baseball bat – pun not (entirely) intended.

Sherlock shrugged and went back to studying the specimen in the sugar bowl, sticking elegant long fingers in and pulling out a black leathery bit. The wing, John presumed. “Quite dead,” Sherlock said to himself and then louder to John, “The victim was American.”

“Killed by his own bat? What, was he cleaning it and it accidentally went off?” John sniggered, his thoughts still running on patriotic, military lines. Nothing funny about gunshot wounds, of course, he knew that from bitter personal experience. Except when they were, well, funny – very minor and self-inflicted due to bizarre mishaps or negligence and extremely efficient in teaching everyone concerned about the importance of safety and proper handling of a firearm. There was something about learning a thing the hard way that really made the lesson stick.

“Again, hilarious,” Sherlock remarked in an icy tone.

It was interesting, really, how the man managed to appear imperious and haughty while wearing a ratty old T-shirt and a pair of pyjama bottoms, with a blue dressing gown haphazardly thrown on and sporting a mop of dark curls in horrible disarray. John wondered fleetingly if Sherlock had consciously cultivated the ability to maintain an unruffled appearance regardless of circumstances or if he’d simply been born with it.

“The bat wasn’t the murder weapon. It was used as a penetrative instrument.”

John froze mid-bite and swallowed with difficulty. “Christ. Trying to eat here, Sherlock.”

“It was done post-mortem, John.”

“As if that makes it perfectly okay,” John muttered but Sherlock paid him no heed. “Quite an ingenious method of throwing the police off the track,” he said cheerfully, “especially considering that it was a spur of the moment sort of idea… Should we inform Mrs Hudson?”

“What? About the bat?”

“Yes.”

“Why the bloody hell would we?”

There was a pause. A horrified, disgusted pair of blue eyes met a baffled, aloof pair of pale grey ones. Thin white fingers were quite gently cradling a tiny lump of fur and leather.

“Oh… Right. You mean the bat in the sugar bowl. Sorry.” John gave his head a shake to rid himself of the mental image of a baseball bat stuck into… an orifice – and also of the image of sitting in Mrs Hudson’s cosy living room, munching on her scrumptious home-baked scones while casually describing the gruesome scene to her. “I’m sleep-deprived, a bit slow in the brain department at the moment. Yeah, sure, I guess we should tell her, it’s her house. And please throw that sugar away, you daft git, it should be common sense to consider it inedible no matter what manner of creature died in it.”

“Hmm,” Sherlock hummed pensively while pouring the sugar into the bin. “Common sense, not really my area, or so I am told…”

John snorted into his tea, secretly pleased to note that Sherlock had at least enough common sense not to throw the bowl away with the sugar. He decided to consider it as progress even if it did mean having to wash and disinfect the bowl later on.

“You get approximately five times the amount of sleep I do, under normal circumstances, and I would still categorise you as slow, John. Exactly how much sleep would you require to reach an adequate level of brain function? Going comatose would rather defeat the purpose, I think.”

“Now you’re being hilarious. Har-har.” John reached for the jam and started to apply a generous layer of the stuff onto a piece of toast. “And what are the normal circumstances for us, anyway? This bloody odd conversation about the bat is the closest we’ve come to normal the whole week, you know.”

“Bats.”

“Sorry, what?” John had been busy munching on his toast and the crunching noise echoing inside his head made him wonder if he’d heard wrong.

“Bats in plural,” Sherlock corrected pedantically. “We have been discussing two very different meanings of the word.”

“Yeah… and what does it say about our version of normal when one of the bats was shoved up some poor bloke’s arse?” God, and now he had a mental image of a live bat – the animal version – stuck and trapped inside… eew, clawing and biting and… John gave a shudder and quickly concentrated on slurping on his tea to remove the image, desperately resisting the urge to shuffle in his chair or otherwise physically draw attention to his behind. Good Lord. He hadn’t thought it possible but sharing a flat with Sherlock Holmes exposed him to more disturbing subject matter than a career in medicine and the military combined.

“That it’s infinitely more interesting than ordinary people’s version of normal?” Sherlock suggested in full earnest.

“Yes, well, that _would_ be your way of looking at it, wouldn’t it?”

Sherlock huffed, lifting his hand to observe the dear-departed creature so closely that for a moment John imagined him attempting to give the bat mouth-to-mouth. He had a feeling that there would be a dissection performed in the kitchen in the very near future. Sherlock took a deep sniff at the animal. “Just out of curiosity, why do you call him a poor bloke?”

“Just out of general decency,” John drawled in mockery of the detective, still fighting the impulse to wiggle his arse where he was sitting, “I tend to feel sorry for people who get murdered.”

“Ah. But he deserved it. He was a serial rapist, dozens if not hundreds of victims to his name over a period spanning two decades. Brilliant chemist, that man – he had perfected the use of drug cocktails for his particular purposes. One combination to subdue the victim, another to produce the desired semiconscious state, yet another to induce partial amnesia. Quite elegant…”

Sherlock was silent for a short moment (just long enough for John to consider commenting on his deplorable lack of empathy for the poor victims) before continuing, “But that’s beside the point. Technically, it was self-defence, she shoved him hard enough for him to crack his skull open on the edge of a table. Her inventive use of the bat after the fact was merely an effort to point the investigation away from her. It would have worked, too, the bright minds of the Met were convinced that it was a gay love affair gone wrong or something of the sort.” Sherlock scoffed derisively and then flashed a blink-and-you-miss-it superbly smug smile. “Naturally, I sorted it out. The young woman was apprehended, other victims were unearthed, the death was declared accidental and the bat incident was viewed as an ill-advised act of a panicked, shocked, desperate mind. Nothing premeditated about any of it, not on her part.”

“Huh. Well, guess it’s alright then.” John spent a moment pondering the oddities of life – namely, the oddities of his life, leading to this moment where it was natural to discuss murder and mayhem of all sorts while enjoying a peaceful bit of late breakfast, inordinately happy about being able to use the kitchen table for that purpose, and quite content to idly watch his flatmate fiddle with a dead bat.

There was a pause.

“Sherlock.”

“Yes, John?”

“Take the bat out of the microwave.”

“Would it be better to boil it, you think?”

 

 


End file.
